O’Malley, Harris – Between the Cracks: The Bride

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Between the Cracks: The Bride

Dialogue is a crucial thing in comics. Well, at least the ones that have dialogue, I suppose. A wrong turn of phrase or two can throw off the whole mood and effect of a comic. This one is a perfect example, as it kicks off on the wrong foot immediately and never really recovers. The basic story here is a retelling of The Bride of Frankenstein, or maybe that’s too much of a leap on my part, but it’s about a dead woman reviving to gunshots and violence. The rest of the book is about her going through her new life. She doesn’t seem to display much emotion about anything after her disturbing awakening until the climax of the story, but I know better than to talk about that. Anyway, my problem is that there’s the obligatory mad scientist that created her at the beginning, and, you guessed it, he says a lot of mad scientist cliches. “She lives. She lives!” “Live, my precious. Live for me…” “You can’t have her. I … I made her!” If the book was a parody of bad horror movies or something, fine. The problem is that things get increasingly serious and grim from there, and it was just impossible for me to connect with something that had such a silly beginning. There are some good things about this book, don’t get me wrong. The art was solid and there were still bits that were haunting. I’d be curious to see other stuff from this guy to see where he goes from here, but this is something that could pretty much be avoided in my book. Check out the website, he has samples and other books up there…